Infusion pumps are used for intravenous delivery of medicines such as insulin, analgesics, sedatives, vasopressors, heparin and anti-arrhythmics to patients. Correct delivery of these medications is important for avoiding adverse events, particularly in critically ill patients. Smart infusion pumps, which include drug libraries and integrated decision support software in their medication delivery systems, have decreased errors in administration of medications by incorporating features such as hard and soft alarm limits, clinician messaging, and medication barcode input. Smart pumps are also able to utilize electronic medical records and inputs customizable for specific care units to improve safety for individual patients. Other infusion systems have incorporated features for a specific disease, such as algorithms to change the rates of insulin delivery based on a patient's glucose level, or to offer procedures specifically for advanced cardiac life support.
Yet, smart pumps are still subject to human programming errors and limited response times of busy clinicians. There remains a need to improve the ability for infusion pumps to provide safe delivery of medicines to patients, particularly in the case of critically ill patients where delivery of a medicine is life-sustaining.